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The theme of this year’s Teagasc national beef conference is practice into profit.
This year’s conference will focus on dairy beef systems and suckler beef systems, both catered for in separate sessions. The conference comes at a time where beef prices have contracted by 20c/kg in September alone and weanlings are struggling to make the same prices of 12 months ago.
The backdrop to the conference is not one of positivity.
Sessions
The first speaker, Dr Robert Prenderville, will outline both the physical and financial performance of recent research work carried out on dairy beef systems in Johnstown Castle research centre. Prenderville has been working for a number of years on routes to market for Friesian-cross, Hereford-cross and Angus-cross calves from the dairy herd.
This research comes at an important time, as we see an increase in calves from the dairy herd that will find their way into the beef system. Farmers need to know the most profitable system to finish these calves and also pay close attention to the carcase weights possible from each system in the context of meeting carcase specification and achieving quality assurance bonuses.
This session will close with Alan Kehoe, a Friesian steer dairy-calf-to-beef farmer from Murintown, Co Wexford.
Kehoe finishes 120 dairy beef progeny on an annual basis, having set up the system in 2012. He will outline his farm plan and how grassland management and budgeting is critical to the farm’s performance. Implementing the farm plan has seen gross margin jump from €-592/ha in 2012 to €396/ha in 2015, with the aim of hitting €1,300/ha over the next three years.
Suckler systems
The second session will focus on suckler beef systems and will start with Laurent Griffon from the Institut de l’Elevage in France outlining the French system for beef performance recording and how this has affected the French beef industry over the past number of years.
The French system records details on over four million calves annually and Griffon will explain how this data recording feeds into the French evaluation system.
David Clarke, a suckler farmer form Thurles, Co Tipperary, will highlight how keeping accurate records on his farm has helped him make informed breeding decisions.
Beef development
Donagh Berry, geneticist with Teagasc at its Moorepark centre will outline how genomics can help move the beef industry into the next stage of its development. Berry will give an overview of genomics and its application within the Irish context and also how genomics can increase reliability of both terminal and replacement indexes.
Damaged confidence
The conference comes at a time when confidence has dropped in the beef sector. Recent price reductions have left beef prices running 40c/kg to 50c/kg behind this time last year and this has had an effect on the store and weanling trade.
Beef finishers faced with the prospect of a long winter are once again being asked to take a lower beef price at a time of year when finishing costs are at their highest.
However, farmers should still look within the gate to see what changes can be made and find out how the findings of recent research can impact their farms and the conference provides an excellent opportunity to do this.
Is there really a profitable system for finishing dairy X calves or will the extra supply just tip the supply demand balance?
Are current genetics being used in dairy herds in conflict with efficient beef production?
Has the French maternal breeding programme worked and what are farmer’s opinions of it?
With a low level of data recording, weights etc, will genomics be able deliver for the beef sector what it has achieved for the dairy sector?
You can follow updates from the Teagasc National Beef Conference live on www.farmersjournal.ie
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